


Vendetta

by felldownthelist



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: Communication Failure, Gen, Nonverbal Communication, Short, post season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 14:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20098786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felldownthelist/pseuds/felldownthelist
Summary: More or less not long after S1 Ep8;"They are two Spice Girls short."





	Vendetta

**Author's Note:**

> All the French? It’s written here in English. Because I watched this with someone who didn’t pick up on the FUCKING DYNAMITE that is Frenchie seeing Kimiko with tidy hair and painted nails and exclaiming, “look at you, my heart” - and I realized that the tone and shiz is like English sarcasm and because French just sounds so badass (AND TOMER… JUST… TOMER) it’s sometimes hard to realize he’s such a pudding.

Violence is a language in which he’s been well educated since early childhood, and that, Frenchie thinks, ponders, philosophises; that is what makes them different.

He wants to get out and find his comrades. They are two Spice Girls short.

Butcher and Hughie are missing, separately rather than together which is possibly worse possibly not. MM is present, but, Frenchie thinks, overly concerned about laying low.

MM hates him, usually. That’s okay. Hate is a strong enough feeling. Frenchie knows that it binds them together more, makes him important to this man. At present, MM is being unusually tolerant, almost leaning over into another feeling altogether. He _will not_ allow Frenchie’s exiting of the safe house they’ve hunkered down in to track little Hughie and Butcher. He sits obsessively over a laptop in the corner, appearing to ignore Frenchie and Kimiko both until one of them make anything he perceives as an attempt to leave.

It’s okay. None of them are in prison. He wants to get out and get to work, but he can be content for now to wait. Perhaps a day or two.

Kimiko, too, is relatively content. He can read it in the lines of her body, clearer to him each day, but, more so, the echo of her heart – Frenchie has no power outside of being human, but human is a power, and he feels her heart, feels it in his bones. He knows her deep, deep, deep in his soul; so like him, and he’s not met many like them and he cherishes every second he is granted with her because she is precious. A miracle.

MM plays at being afraid of her. He’ll come around. He was introduced to violence in a much softer manner, Frenchie knows; like Butcher, like little Hughie. People introduced in such a way tended toward the rush, the revenge, the chasing of the feeling of power.

Frenchie has been powerless. He has been intimately familiar with it.

Watching Kimiko admire her orange nail polish, he feels a different kind of powerlessness. A different kind of rush.

It flows through his veins as he rushes around the tiny space they have designated a kitchen; two pressure cookers and a microwave oven, a mini fridge sitting in the corner.

He can’t leave the safe house and do as he wants to do.

He thinks he might make macarons.

“I’m getting some sleep,” MM informs him. “Do not. Leave. This building.”

“Enjoy your adventures into dreamland, my brother,” Frenchie tells him, realizes he’s said it all in French because MM’s face does that thing. It is not hard to learn another language, especially when greeted with it every day; Frenchie is familiar with English and Hebrew to the point of fluency. He’s never bothered with much else but after some time in Israel can almost match that with Arabic and Russian.

MM thinks that he’s been told something offensive, Frenchie thinks. He can be a little racist like that. Maybe this is part of their problem.

“Americans do not always understand the sometimes subtle intonation of the Europeans,” he says, in French again, watching carefully. MM snorts and turns to go.

“Whatever man,” MM says, waving a hand.

“Sweet dreams,” Frenchie tries in English, plods back to the kitchen.

Kimiko sits with him while they don’t sleep; watches shark week, watches nonsense.

The adverts between shows come on. There is a clip of Homelander, talking about his childhood. Something about what a wonderful homebody he is. Something about his Mother and baseball games.

“Ah, this is a lie, I think,” Frenchie says, quietly. “You see his eyes, my heart?” He directs to Kimiko. She tilts her head just so. “He has no Mother,” Frenchie is sure. “This, an act in a play. So sad, no?”

Kimiko doesn’t quite look at him, but he sees her ponder. It’s an ache in her, he feels. A reflection on their own lives, brought on by a man turned into an icon. It’s quite apparent to Frenchie that this man has never known any real love.

“You and I,” Frenchie reflects, trying to allow the sadness to come through himself, observe it, it’s important to remember with love; “we have known love. We have known a home. And yet here is this man who has never.” He ruminates. “But Butcher, Hughie. Our MM. They have homes and love. And yet.”

Kimiko watches him now, distanced from her own emotions by paying attention to his. She’s curious to see where this goes.

“And yet,” he looks at her, eyes meeting. It’s more genuine, truthful communication than he has had for a long time. He feels steadier. He is being listened to. What he says is being contemplated. “And yet their homes do not stop them from their need for this violence. You see, Butcher,” he says, thinking aloud at speed now, “here is a man who had love. A home. It is taken away. He cannot bear his life. Instead of thankfulness for those years, for that time, he is consumed by the need for revenge.” Kimiko blinks at him, waiting. “You and I, my heart,” he says, fondness and familiarity and wonder filling his chest. “We have so much less to look back on. And yet, here we are. I crave no revenge. Better that I keep my heart free for love.”

Her lips quirk. He sees gouged eyes, broken necks in his minds eye.

“Love can mean many things,” he allows. “I am still what I am. A gun to aim, to some. I am simply trying to make things I see better.”

She doesn’t look away from him, and he breathes, content. The eye contact is more intimate than almost anything else he has ever done. Their heads loll back against the couch cushions.

Frenchie changes the dressing on the bullet wound in his shoulder in place of waking up from sleep he has not had. He rearranges the kitchen space, orders the rations by type and package size. Imagines that such an exercise would be meditative to MM.

Time to try again.

“We should be out there trying to find them,” Frenchie imparts, placing a sandwich down by MM who has been glued to his laptop now for more than a day straight.

“What do you think I’m doing, man,” MM says, tone hostile, glancing at the food. “And you should be thanking me for keeping our asses safe in here. We’re burned; I’m working; you two keep watching fucking Sharknado or whatever the shit.” he pauses, looking at the food again. Frenchie raises his eyebrows. “Fuck,” MM says, under his breath, and Frenchie just says, “it’s a suggestion, that is all,” turns to leave, walks lackadaisically back to where the food is kind of running out fast; mind running over recipes and substitutions and exactly how much mileage he can get out of tinned tuna.

Alas. MM is going to enjoy that sandwich. Truffle chicken is one of his favorites.

Kimiko is there, drawing on the walls. It’s different to last time. The patterns are changing.

“Are you telling us something, my heart?” He asks her, softly, getting close enough to look hard.

She doesn’t give him anything in return, continues to scrape the pen against the whitewashed brick.

Frenchie sits back on his heels as she works, watches.

Another day passes.

Day four in captivity, as Frenchie thinks on it now; MM cracks.

“I have the guns all ready to go,” Frenchie prods, appealing to MM’s sense of order and tendency to assume him disorganized. “Whenever you get sick of just looking at that thing.” He points to the laptop.

He isn’t expecting MM to slam it shut and throw it, hard, at the nearest wall. It’s an unusual display of anger against an inanimate object, rather than, for example, himself, and Frenchie is concerned.

“What is it that you have come across that is upsetting you so?”

“God _damn_ it,” MM shouts, hands on his face. Frenchie blinks. “MM?” He says, inquiringly.

When he gets no response, he turns, sees Kimiko observing with interest from a countertop. He shrugs at her to show that he has no idea what is going on here either. When he looks back to MM, the man suddenly turns on them.

“What the fuck are you two looking at? Huh?”

“MM,” Frenchie steps forward steadily, and MM says, “do _not_ touch me,” and he sighs, steps back. His temper is with Kimiko, he feels. Before her, he would have lashed out, pushed MM until they fought for real. She reminds him of what really matters.

“Fuck Butcher, fuck that English cunt right in the fucking ass, what the fuck have I got to show for his bullshit now, huh? You two. That’s it. We can’t leave, we can’t do shit without attracting attention we can’t handle right now.”

Kimiko raises an eyebrow, but MM doesn’t parse her communication correctly.

“Fuck the lot of you,” he spits. Frenchie considers.

“Perhaps a little affirmative action would assist your temperament?”

“Go fuck yourself,” MM says, sits down. Puts his head into his hands. “I’m acting like a kid in the yard. Motherfucker took my _life_ this time. My _wife_ is gone! Monique is never going to see me ever again. And my daughter-” he cracks, and this is a moment; Frenchie can feel it.

And he can be Butcher and Hughie, or he can be a miracle. Frenchie doesn’t know which he will choose, but he tries to make better what he sees, small or big, and he’s here and this is a brother who needs.

“I know,” he assures, inasmuch as he can. “I know. I know.”

“You don’t know shit,” MM rages into his hands.

Frenchie glances back at Kimiko, who is holding his temper, guarding it and letting something else lead the way. When she nods at him, he feels content. He knows what he will do.

“I see you with your child,” Frenchie says, back to MM. “I see you.” He takes his jacket off. He places it on the counter by his side. MM doesn’t look at him. “I see the way she looks at you. And I think of this.” He removes the t-shirt and long sleeved undershirt in one.

He’s kind of riddled with damage, he knows, and Kimiko would but MM won’t pick out the differences for himself, so Frenchie has to make it obvious. He twists to the side, obscuring old bullet wounds, some scarring from the lashes he’d endured once in place of a prison sentence. He moves his hand to showcase the burn marks on his back.

“We all remember our Fathers,” he tells MM. “This is how I remember mine. Every day, I remember mine.” He doesn’t turn back to his brother in arms. “Your child will remember you,” he says, “every day, no matter what. But your child will remember you with love, the way I recall my Mother. There is nothing of this that is hers,” he finishes, hoping he’s made his point well enough. “You are a good Father. You made choices in the time you had and you were a good Father.”

He waits for MM to shout more, to tell him he has no idea about Fatherhood or any of it. When he looks back up, the other man has the beginnings of wet eyes. He looks otherwise a little blank. An emotion driven process going on inside of him that Frenchie doesn’t understand, can’t understand. He puts his clothes back on. When he’s done, he turns to find MM right in his face.

“You are one savage motherfucker,” he says, claps him twice on the shoulder. “Alright. Sorry I lost my shit. It’s been a crazy fucking week and I just lost a lot for a stupid English prick who doesn’t know shit.”

“Should we go out to find him?” Frenchie queries.

“Yeah. Fuck it,” MM says. “Let me go get the guns.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write shit, really. But in between re-editing TUA stuff this series just ate me up. I've loved the graphic novels for years and was terrified this would be total shit. BUT. FRENCHIE. STILL.
> 
> MY HEART.


End file.
